emaandcas

[emaandcas]

Service: Spread the Love (April 2024)

For my last month of CAS service I have decided to write one more letter. However, this will not be the end of voluteering even if CAS is coming to an end. As I am finishing school eariler this year, the whole month of May will be free to got to Zipka and work with childern before going to college.

This time I chose siblings, Mikey and Missy to write to. They seem like a fun sibling pair to write because even if they are similar they are very different as well. Their main interest are the beach and Disney World. Mikey's chore is to collect eggs in the morning and Missy is describes as someone who loves changing her outfits a lot. I think the main reason for picking them is the fact that they are siblings which has a very personal meaning to me as I have a close bond with my sisters. Writing this letter was easy, not because I knew what to write, but because I just love to hear that siblings have a good relationship.

[emaandcas]

Activity: Roller Skating (April 2024)

As my final year of highschool is coming to an end I feel very stressed about everting, even the things that I cannot control. To take a break from all of this I wanted to spend time with my sister. She proposed that I teach her how to roller skate, since when I fisrt tried that a few years eariler she gave up fast, but now she is 9-years-old so I thought that this would be much easier, but I was completely wrong.

We started with basics, how to brake, how to move your legs and how to keep balance. The hardest part was teaching her how to move the legs because when we were roller skating on our street she just wanted me to pull her along and this was hard shince she is not a little girl anymore and I was on roller skates too so my balance was also a tricky thing. But, after some time we did succeed after a few hours. The rout we took was not challenging as the routes I usually take alone or with my older sister, but it was a pretty good one to teach her how to skate. Throughout the whole process I was full of patience and and I fun which is important to me so that I can relax before the storm of final exams comes.

[emaandcas]

Creativity: Cake decorating (April 2024)

This month I decided to decorate muffins. After Christams I was not really in the mood to eat anything sweet because our Christmas lunch had my grandma's ckaes, our cookies and my cousins cakes.

Since, the weather is starting to become warmer and warmer strawberries are all over the stores. My mom usually buys the strawberries from the farmers market so they go bad very quickly. This was the reason why I decided to use them in decorating my muffins. I was going for a rose type of look, but in the end it did not really look like that. However, I am really proud of myself because I made the muffin batter from scratch. I did follow the recipe, but at least I did not buy the already mixed butter where I just need to add the milk or water and eggs. Because of this the process took longer than expected, I was done in the evening, but it was a fun experience. My older sister was DJ-ing abd my younger sister was talking our eras off. However, I love bonding with my sisters even if sometimes too much activity in the kitchen makes me feel angry because I have this rule that when I am in the kitchen cooking nobody else can be.

[emaandcas]

Service: Integral - World Education Fair (March 2024)

This year I had a chance to participate in World Education Fair as an assistant to the KÄRNTEN University of Applied Sciences that is located in Austria.

This was a whole new experience for me. I was invited by Integral EDU to participate as they are helping me prepare for college. At first I was thinking that I will decline the offer, but after some time I realised that this could be a new exciting experience, and it was. Delegates who came to represent the university were two beautiful people who made this experience even better. We talked about their university, life in general and we joked a lot. When we were not talking with each other my job was to scan people's bar codes and for those who do not speak English or German, but only Croatian, translate all the questions and anwsers. I was at the Hotel Dubrovnik from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and I was not tired at all as the company was really pleasant.

If I ever get a chance to do this again I would immediately say "yes". Evene if I was a little bit scared in first, that my English will not be good enough or that I will stress about translation that no language will sound right, that all passed as time went on.

[emaandcas]

Activity: Roller Skating (March 2024)

This month I had a chance to start roller skating again. It was really warm outside and I took that chance to go outside to relax from all the school work and preperations for final exams. When I was thinking about doing this activity I was feeling unsure because it would take my time for studying. However, this time I didi listen to my mom and decided to go outside and just forget about all school related things so that I could feel better and less stressed. I am not very sleeping well so I was not out for a long time, only hour and around 50 minutes. After I came back inside I did feel a little bit guilty about doing something that would not benefit my exam results in the end, but how time passed that guilty feeling was starting to disappear.

I have to say that my home work out did made this sudden activity easier to endure since I was not on skates for a long time.

[emaandcas]

Creativity: Photography (March 2024)

This month our school took class trips and our class decided that we want to go to Budapest. I have been there a few times before with family, but experiencing Budapest charm with firends was really fun.

Usually I do not take photos of people, however, this time I tried it and I was plesantly surprised that it turned out better than expected. My friend borrowed me her profesional camera so the quality of photos is really good. I did not have any goals that needed to be achieved for this activity, I just "went with the flow" and took photos of people from my class as they were looking around which sometimes worked, but most of the times they wanted to pose. Walking around with a camera around my neck the whole trip was fun, but kinda exusting as well as the profesional camera is quite heavy.

What I concluded that after finsishing high school I will really miss school trips, and I am sorry that just know I have decided to explore taking photos of people. Before I was scared because people are very hard to photograp as something always is not right and that is why I sticked to architecture, but now I think I discovered someting new.

[emaandcas]

Service:  Spread the Love (February 2024)

This month I did not have a chance to volunteer at Zipka so I chose to do the online version of volunteering. I wrote a letter to Liyah Rae W. What I find great about Spread the Love is that they made a big list of children you can write letters to. So even if I still did not get an answer back from some children I wrote to before I can still write to other children, but not getting letters back did concern me a little bit. Because of this I decided to ask in the group we have on Slack if I did something wrong. The message I got back from the teams was that eeveryting was okay with my letters since they had to confirem them before sending, but that sometimes not everyone get a letter back. This made me feel a little bit better. I was kinda sad that out of all letters mine were not good enough, but that did not stop me from writing more and enjoying the whole process.

What was interesting about Liyah Rae W. is that she love sign language, and just like I wrote, I know how to sign a few letters, but nothing complicated. Because of this I would really like to get a letter back from her so that maybe she can teach me something more so that I can lead a normal conversation in the future.

[emaandcas]

Activity: Home workout (February 2024)

The plan I made last month for this month's activity did actually happened. I decided to take on the challenge of full body training that would help me maintain balance and strengthen all muscle groups. Just now I have realised that for last five winter months I focused on different muscle groups, but without any intention. This could be described as a systematic approach through structured workouts. After this month I have the opportunity to really feel and witness the transformation of my plan. I did not have any desired goals, but I am very happy with how everyting ended.

This month's workout was hard, even more than I have expected. I did consult with my friends before every workout plan came to life, to know if those exercises are the right ones and if they think that for me, we could say a begginer, they would be to complex to do. This month the plank was really hard for me to do. Considering that I do not really like to workout my hands this is totally normal in my opinion, but it still did hurt my ego a liitle bit since I thought that I was in a good form.

[emaandcas]

Creativity: Nail Art (February 2024)

Last month I did little golden starts on my nail and I got a lot of compliments, so for this month I decided to practice even more since I was on a "roller coaster" last time when it came to drawing them on. So to change it up a liitle this mothn I decided to do the french tips instead of black base. In this case, not only did I feel frustraed about making the starts, but even the french tips gave me a headache. I had to watch multiple video on Youtube about tips and tricks to get the perfect french tip. To be honest, this activity was made up from a lot of trial-and-errors, but I told myself that I would not give up. Maybe all the nails in the end did not look the same, but I was satisfied with the final outcome. I maybe did ask my mom for help on some nails, she is an estetician, and she didi help me. I feel ashamed to admit that nails that she helped me on do look the best, but I think the practice makes everyting perfect so maybe doing starts once again in the future will help me make them perfect.

[emaandcas]

Service: Zipka (January 2024)

This month I volunteered at Zipka again. Since I have a lot of school work and have to work on my Internal Assesments, I do not really find that much time to go volunteer at Zipka. The fact that that is happening is making me upset. This month I have decided that even if I am bad at time management I will try to go to Zipka and work with someone to make their grades better and to make myself reconnect with people there because I have meet alot of new people from my school that I would have not meet if I did not sign up for Zipka.

This month i worked with a girl on math problems again. I collaborated with another volunteer because her child fell sick at the lest moment, but she still came. We were working on circles and geometry in general. One task was had to acomplish as no body had a divider and we had to draw several circles with specified radius so we just had to gudie the girl how to do it at home. I really liked working in a pair even if this activity does not require two people for one child.

[emaandcas]

Activity: Home workout (January 2024)

After last month and the little confusion I had about my plan, I asked around my friends who workout in the gym or do pilates about my plan. My friend advise told me that I should have done lower body and then the core. So to kinda erase that mistake from last month I made a plan to work on the lower body again. I was strengthening the glutes and legs to build a strong foundation. As I said before, legs are not hard for me to work on. I bike everyday to school so they do have build up muscle, especially when the wind is strong so I have to use all the strength I have in my legs to move the bike. The plan I made for this month was on a normal level of "hard workout". I listend to music and enjoyed my time. My legs did not hurt like my hads the last month so I was pretty happy with the outcome after every workout. The process was the same, following 2 workout plans every week. For the next month, since it will still be cold to roller skate I was thinging about doing a whole body workout since I think I could endure something demaning as the progress can be seen on my body muscle.

[emaandcas]

Creativity: Nail Art (January 2024)

This month I have decided to try and make some new nail designs. This time I have prepared by buying brushed in a local nail shop near our school. They have a variety of brushes, glitter, nail polish, literally everyting that I would need in the future.

After searching for some inspiration photos on Pinterest I have come across nail with four-point starts. At first I have just saved the idea for later and continuted looking for more ideas because I thought that thta would we too complicated after some hearts and cow print, however they stayed at the back of my mind and I just could not get any better ideas so I decided to take on that challenge. To be honest, I did redo a few nail a few times, but I think that it was worth it. Using a brush was more easier than a toothpick since I had a better control of how much nail polish I want on the brush. Because of this great control, most mistakes were done because of my unsteady hands. It took me about 1 hour with all the mistakes and redos for one hand only. After that I took a break and then went to do the other hand. Doing the right hand was more challenging then the left hand because the right hand is my dominant one, however, I did make it in the end, even after I almost gave up and eraised everything.

[emaandcas]

Service:  Spread the Love (December 2023)

This month I decided to start writing letter to children as well. Last time I did it made me feel better and it was a fun process or writing. However, what makes me feel weird is that I do not actually know to whom I am writing. I know the name and I know what the child is intered in, but not really the face and I understand this. Anonimity need to be kept and I respect that, but in my opinion, 2-3 sentences about what the child likes is not really eenouugh for me to write a quality letter. However, maybe they are not looking for quality letter, but for people to engage in making the children feel better. And in my opinion that is very important. So when I was writing this letter I tried to include details about my life, but not a lot of them so if the childs parents decide to answer me back I would have something else to write about. It was said that Betsy love dancing and singing so I mostly taked about that. This time I did not add any photos, because I was not really sure about Betsy's main interest, Wiggles and Mr. Tumble and I did not want to make it seem like I am writing this letter just to send something. If I hear back from her, I will make sure I am well prepared.

In conclusion, writing Spread the Love letters made me feel good because even if I do not know the child personally I still want her to feel good about her interest and maybe even meet her one day.

[emaandcas]

Activity: Home workout (December 2023)

Since it is cold outside and I am not a big fan of cold I have decided to follow up my workout plan. This is the third month I am doing this, and the last month was not really fun to do, I hope that my plan for this month will workout just as good as the first plan did. To change it up this month I will focus on strengthening the core muscles to improve my stability and postural support.

When I look back at all the videos I follwed before I think that this workout plan is most similar to them. It was not as chalenging as the last months workout, but I did like how it made me feel stronger. Now when I am thinking about the whole experinece maybe I did take the wrong route because maybe I should have worked on the legs again, but I will have to investigate that on forums and ask my friends for future advice.

[emaandcas]

Creativity: Cake decorating (December 2023)

December is the month known for its famous holiday, Christmas. In my family the tradition is to bake cookies and other cakes and decorate them with sprinkles, special icing, chocolate icing, etc. But the most fun part is that they are not round, but in different shapes like a boot, a tree, a heart, starts and others.

This year, the most time was wasted on explaning my younger sister that the cookies should look aesthetic and not like a rainbow. This was the hardest part of all, not even shaping three pans of little choclate balls was exausting as trying to reason my sister. However, the more difficult part was also being careful that the right amout of icing is on the cookies. If there is too much almost all of the sprinkles fall off, if there is too little sthe spinkles will not stay on.

All toghether, it was fun being a part of this process that took hours to finish.But, what is more imnportant for me is that I got to share this experience with my close ones and I am looking forward to repeating this next year.

[emaandcas]

Service: Zipka (November 2023)

This month I volunteered at Zipka. I was tutoring a girl from the fifth grade and we worked on math problems concerning four-digit numbers and equality and inequality.

Since the girl was here the last year we already knew each other so that was not a problem because I knew how she functions. However, since her tutor is usually one of my friends and the girl is really attached to her it felt weird for me to work with her. I know their connection is special so I think that she did not really want to listen to what I was telling her, but we did finish all we had to in her workbook so maybe I am just overthinking this interaction. This session also made me miss my "student" from last year because he was quite loud and now everything was quiet so it is a bigger change that I originally thought it would be.

[emaandcas]

Activity: Home workout (November 2023)

This month I decided to continue with making my own workout plans since I enjoyed the last month. However I did not want to work on my lower body again because balance is key so I decided to dedicate this month to strengthening the upper body focusing on chest muscles and shoulders. I will be using the same system of 2 workouts that will repeat every week to, again as the last month, be able to see the maximum outcome.

I am was not a big fan of this workout plan I made. My hands hurt a few days later as well everytime I worked out. Maybe that was a good thing because now I am sure that something was chaning in my muscle structure in my hands and shoulders, but I really did not like the feeling of it. If I am brave enough in the future I could try this workout again, but now I am not really sure if I want to experience this again.